We use a dedicated 1100mAh A123 battery pack in all of our 500 and larger size helis. Our turbine heli has dual 2300mAh A123 packs. Our 450 and smaller size use the built-in BEC with a Nano receiver, just in case.

Update: Got a few of the parts I messed up in my original order, sweet design Alan! it seems to be working great!
There are some code tweaks I want to make which will hopefully be done this weekend and then i'll put together the 5 other boards I have and sell them off.. current estimate is $35,official number still TBD. (bring your own sensors.. the amp sensor shunt board is dependent on what power plugs you use, temp sensors have a few different forms depending on how you want to use it and i don't care to open a bigger can of worms than I have already) The two guys who posted are first in line. If Jim's update on the Aurora9 requires some code changes, i'll sell updated pic's for a couple bucks to those interested.

OK. There is no information at all on the shunt being used, how it is wired, etc. The archive I saw just had the PCB artwork and that's it. No schematic or explanation on how to assemble the shunt, where it plugs in, etc. Is this info somewhere?

Got the first clean board put together, and did a tiny bit of coding. (the temp can now output in Fahrenheit with a simplified conversion, so it's out to lunch with extremes.. but should work fine for its purpose which is outputting in a number I can relate to) haven't put together a current sensor, so no legit testing on that. Voltage sensor seems to wander off a volt or two for every ten from what's tuned as a baseline, so it could use some tweaking, but definitely usable.
This is probably going to be a long term work in progress as I tweak things and lean more.. so to anyone interested in the current progress I have a small number of these available for $35 plus shipping. (this is literally cost of parts.. If I charged reasonable labor on these they'd be $100+ easy) If I actually sell a few of these and make some worthwhile progress code side I'll sell updated chips that will just plug in for $5
The board has input for two temperature sensors, a voltage sensor and a current sensor.

Disclamer:
I'm doing this because I wish some other hobbyist would have sold kits or something like this.. keep in mind there is no warranty. i'll do my best to help with anything. please don't come blame me because you burned up something or crashed because this board shorted out. This is exactly what it looks like; home brew hobby gear.

P.S. i'm getting out of the navy in a couple months and looking for employment, I'm a computer science major looking for a software engineering position and would appreciate any opportunities or contacts being passed my way.

Images

Well done. If I could make a suggestion. Jim has been threatening to make a board that interfaced with eLogger sensors, I believe they talk using I2C. Maybe you could reduce the board size by having a single input from an eLogger and let it do all the individual sensor handling. You could pick up the output on the eLoggers LCD interface and just downlink that info. Maybe have to have a specific PowerPanel setup for standardisation but that would be OK. Should make the coding a bit easier as well.

P.S. i'm getting out of the navy in a couple months and looking for employment, I'm a computer science major looking for a software engineering position and would appreciate any opportunities or contacts being passed my way.